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| James Comey testimony: 'I was concerned Trump might lie' – live | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| 4.36pm BST | |
| 16:36 | |
| Republican senator Roy Blunt of Missouri is next. | |
| He notes that Comey continued to show up for work despite his “serious and troublesome” interactions with the president. Then Comey continued to reassure the president that he was not personally under investigation. | |
| Blunt says Comey took no action, “hadn’t even reported up the chain of command that these things had happened.” Was that a mistake? | |
| “No, in fact I think no action was the most important thing I could do” in order to preserve the investigation. | |
| Back to Flynn. Blunt: “My sense would be that the discussion [by Flynn with Kislyak] was not the problem, misleading the vice president might have been.” | |
| Comey agrees. | |
| 4.32pm BST | |
| 16:32 | |
| Comey: 'Why did he kick everybody out of the Oval Office?' | |
| Comey declines to say whether he thought it was odd that Trump seemed unbothered by the Russian tampering. | |
| “I don’t remember any interactions with the president other than the initial briefing” about that issue, Comey says. | |
| Heinrich: why should we believe you? | |
| Comey: “I think witnesses should listen to the whole body of my testimony ... A really significant fact to me is: why did he kick everybody out of the Oval Office? ... That to me as an investigator is a very significant fact.” | |
| Comey’s talking about Trump turning Sessions, Priebus and Kushner out of the Oval Office before bringing up Flynn with Comey. | |
| Updated | |
| at 4.36pm BST | |
| 4.29pm BST | |
| 16:29 | |
| Comey on fact of Russia's tampering: 'it's not a close call' | |
| Up next, Democratic senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico. | |
| Comey says: | |
| There should be no fuzz on this whatsoever. The Russians interfered in our election in the 2016 election cycle ... | |
| It is a high-confidence judgment of the entire intelligence community, and the members of this committee have seen that intelligence ... It’s not a close call. | |
| That happened. That’s about as unfake as you can possibly get ... | |
| This is about America, not about any particular party. | |
| There is "no fuzz" on Russian involvement in the election: "that's about as unfake as you can possibly get" pic.twitter.com/GPX8taN8Ri | |
| Updated | |
| at 4.34pm BST | |
| 4.27pm BST | |
| 16:27 | |
| Comey describes friend's handoff of memo to media | |
| Collins is asking Comey again why he decided to record details of his meeting with the president. | |
| “Really just a gut feel laying on top of all that, that it’s going to be important to protect this organization that I make records.” | |
| How did details of the memo emerge? he’s asked. The memo described Trump asking Comey to let the Flynn inquiry go. | |
| “The president tweeted on Friday after I got fired that ‘I hope that there’s not tapes,” Comey says. Then he woke up in the middle of the night on Monday and realized it was important he get his own version out. | |
| Comey says he “asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter... I asked a close friend of mind to do it.” | |
| Was that Mr Wittes? (Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and editor in chief of the Lawfare blog, is a friend of Comey’s.) | |
| No. | |
| Who was it? | |
| “A good friend of mind who’s a professor at Columbia Law school.” | |
| That presumably led to the publication of this New York Times story reporting that Trump asked Comey to shut down the investigation into Flynn. | |
| Updated | |
| at 4.29pm BST | |
| 4.24pm BST | |
| 16:24 | |
| Note: be advised that while Donald Trump isn’t live-tweeting the hearing, Donald Trump Jr is. Perhaps weak by comparison but it will have to do: | |
| We all know that there is no way anyone in the swamp would leak something favorable to #potus. Otherwise this whopper would be everywhere! https://t.co/hO5SCD3Nd2 | |
| 4.22pm BST | |
| 16:22 | |
| Shaun Walker | |
| The view from Russia: | |
| Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted on his daily conference call with reporters that the Kremlin is not paying particular attention to the Comey hearing. Peskov said Russia is paying far more attention to summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, also happening today in Kazakhstan. | |
| "Trump's enemies are seeking blood, reminiscent of that old US illness, McCarthyism" says this Russian official. Others are simply ignoring. https://t.co/LGqyQIdyqo | |
| 4.20pm BST | |
| 16:20 | |
| Up next: Susan Collins, Republican senator from Maine. | |
| She thanks Comey for showing up. She wants to talk about Comey’s assurances to the president that the president was not under investigation. | |
| Collins asked whether Comey limited his assurance to counterintelligence investigations or whether he meant any kind of investigation? | |
| Comey says he did not use the term counterintelligence. “My reading of it was it was important to assure him that we were not investigating him...” | |
| Comey says he was worried, as he briefed the president on the “salacious” Steele dossier, about conjuring some kind of “J Edgar Hoover” scenario. | |
| I didn’t want him thinking that I was briefing him on it in order to hang it over him in some way... I was very keen not to leave him with the impression that the bureau [was threatening him]. | |
| Hoover kept files of compromising information about political leaders from Kennedy to King as leverage should he need it. | |
| Updated | |
| at 4.23pm BST | |
| 4.17pm BST | |
| 16:17 | |
| Comey is replying to questions about what former acting attorney general Sally Yates advised the intelligence community about concerns about Michael Flynn. | |
| Comey doesn’t know whether Sessions was in the loop on Flynn. “I don’t remember that he was.” | |
| Comey says he does not know who may have been involved in his firing. | |
| 4.14pm BST | |
| 16:14 | |
| Comey hints at unspecified Sessions conflict in Russia matter | |
| Comey says he can’t talk in an open setting about why he thought attorney general Jeff Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia case. | |
| He knew things about Sessions, Comey says, | |
| that would make his presence in a continued Russia investigation problematic... [things indicating] that he was not going to be in contact with Russia-related matters much longer. | |
| Updated | |
| at 4.27pm BST | |
| 4.12pm BST | |
| 16:12 | |
| Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon. “I believe that the timing of your firing stinks.” | |
| “The odor of presidential abuse of power,” Wyden says, “is so strong.” | |
| In one dinner, Wyden notes, Trump raised Comey’s job prospects, asked for his loyalty and denied allegations against himself. What was Trump after? | |
| Comey: | |
| “I got the sense my job would be contingent upon how he felt I conducted myself and whether I demonstrated loyalty, but I don’t know that I’d go so far as to connect it to the [Russia] investigation.” | |
| Comey says in a patronage relationship the underling considers the views of the boss. | |
| 4.10pm BST | |
| 16:10 | |
| Rubio is wondering whether Trump’s gist was: let the Russia investigation run its course, even if it catches up with Trump’s associates. | |
| Yes, Comey says, that was the sentiment Trump was expressing. | |
| Rubio breaks down Trump’s requests: 1. be loyal, 2. let Flynn go, and 3. tell the public that I’m not under investigation. Is that right? | |
| “Those are the three things he asked, yes sir,” Comey says. | |
| “The only thing that’s never been leaked is the fact that the president has never been under investigation,” Rubio says. He’s making friends with the president here. | |
| Updated | |
| at 4.11pm BST | |
| 4.07pm BST | |
| 16:07 | |
| Rubio asks whether Trump expressed opposition to deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, whose wife’s campaign once took dough from Clinton friend and former DNC chair and current Virginia governor (ie super-Democrat) Terry McAuliffe. | |
| Comey says Trump said that Trump was “rough on him”, McCabe, on the campaign trail. | |
| Comey assured Trump that McCabe was a good guy. | |
| Then Trump later said: “Remember that McCabe thing.” What did that mean? Rubio asks. | |
| Comey says he’s really not sure. | |
| Updated | |
| at 4.22pm BST | |
| 4.05pm BST | |
| 16:05 | |
| Republican senator Marco Rubio is up. Was the Flynn meeting the only time Trump asked Comey to drop the Flynn investigation? | |
| Yes, Comey says. | |
| But did Comey tell the president that was not an appropriate request? | |
| No, Comey says. “I don’t know. [why]... whether I was a bit stunned, I didn’t have the presence of mind. What came to my mind was, be careful what you say.” | |
| Comey says he thought “the cloud” as Trump referred to it meant the Russia investigation in general. But the specific ask by Trump was to say Trump was not under investigation. | |
| Comey: “First time I said we’ll see what we can do. Second time, I explained how it should work.” | |
| 4.02pm BST | |
| 16:02 | |
| Comey talks about Trump’s reference to the Russia investigation as a “cloud.” | |
| Comey says Trump’s ask was to establish publicly that he, Trump, was not under investigation. Comey told the president he’d see what could be done. | |
| Comey says his assurance to Trump that “we’ll see what we can do” was a “slightly cowardly way” of getting off the phone. | |
| Then he reported the conversation to his team. | |
| “You have the president of the United States asking you to stop an investigation,” Feinstein says. What did your colleagues think? | |
| They were shocked, Comey says. “They were very concerned.” But they struggled with what to do with that information. | |
| Should we share this with any senior officials in the justice department? ... We can’t infect the investigative team... so we decided that we ought to keep it away from our troops... | |
| To tell the attorney general made no sense... there were no other appointed confirmed leaders... We decided that the best thing to do would be to hold it, keep it in a box. | |
| Updated | |
| at 4.04pm BST | |
| 3.59pm BST | 3.59pm BST |
| 15:59 | 15:59 |
| Comey: 'Lordy I hope there are tapes' | Comey: 'Lordy I hope there are tapes' |
| Comey goes further into the president’s request that he let the Flynn investigation go. | Comey goes further into the president’s request that he let the Flynn investigation go. |
| “I was so stunned by the conversation that I just took it in... I was playing in my mind” his response. | “I was so stunned by the conversation that I just took it in... I was playing in my mind” his response. |
| Comey continues: | Comey continues: |
| I saw the tweet about the tapes, Lordy I hope there are tapes. I remember saying ‘I agree he’s a good guy,’ as a way of saying ‘I’m not agreeing with what you asked me to just do.’ | I saw the tweet about the tapes, Lordy I hope there are tapes. I remember saying ‘I agree he’s a good guy,’ as a way of saying ‘I’m not agreeing with what you asked me to just do.’ |
| This was Trump’s “tapes” tweet from 12 May: | |
| James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! | |
| Updated | |
| at 4.03pm BST | |
| 3.57pm BST | 3.57pm BST |
| 15:57 | 15:57 |
| Donald Trump Jr picks up on Risch’s parsing of Trump’s words. “I hope [you do this],” Trump said, not “go do this.” | Donald Trump Jr picks up on Risch’s parsing of Trump’s words. “I hope [you do this],” Trump said, not “go do this.” |
| Comey says he understood Trump’s words to represent a direction. | Comey says he understood Trump’s words to represent a direction. |
| Hoping and telling are two very different things, you would think that a guy like Comey would know that. #givemeabreak | Hoping and telling are two very different things, you would think that a guy like Comey would know that. #givemeabreak |